Guard Us
by Justice107
Summary: A world of fire was set upon the peaceful town, saturating the air with ash and death, all part of an evil plan hatched by a monster of a man for reasons of which the residents knew nothing. All they could, and wanted to do, was— "Run! Take your sister and run!" These were the final words of their mother before she disappeared in the chaos.


**Disclaimer: The story plot is mine, the names of characters belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended. **

**Prologue**

A world of fire was set upon the peaceful town, saturating the air with ash and death, all part of an evil plan hatched by a monster of a man for reasons of which the residents knew nothing. All they could, and wanted to do, was—

"Run! Take your sister and run!" These were the final words of their mother before she disappeared in the chaos. Her son, a boy of eight years with his younger sister in tow, tried searching, but the entire town was a war zone. There was no hope of finding her.

_Momma? …Momma? MOMMA!_ the anguish of his inner voice cried, desperately seeking his mother, the one person who could make him feel safe in this hellscape.

Nothing around him made sense. He wanted to stay in place in the confusion, after all, he'd been told that if he was ever lost, he should stay where he was and his mother would find him again. But, the frantic cries of his little sister and the instinct of self-preservation meant that he had no choice; he had to press forward, as he was told, without their mother.

There was no time to comfort his wailing sibling, nor to halt the terrors resonating from his trembling grip on her little hand. He had to get them both to safety. He was her protector now.

Explosions and the snapping sound of firearms came closer; they had to escape now.

"This way," he instructed, pulling her forward, being brave for her sake, as well as his.

Charging through the main roads wasn't an option; people were gunned down on those lanes of transit right before the children's eyes. Horrified, the boy, tensing his fingers, reaffirmed his link to his sister's hand, and retreated through the backstreets. They were narrow, hidden, safe. They were pathways, rarely used by the adults, but intimately known by the rascally boy, who spent years playing between the shadowed walls. The gates and holes that had been thrilling to squirm through were now their salvation.

Sweat bled from their faces as they squeezed through the many crevasses, their little muscles screaming for a momentary pause from the taxing ordeal. Despite this, they were kept safe as they made their way to the end of the residential zone. Their next obstacle was a large spillway, divided into two zones, and void of sizable objects to hide behind. They had already witnessed the attackers madly firing at anything still moving, going down there and making themselves such easy targets would be death sentence.

_What do I do? What am I supposed to do? _the boy whimpered to himself, frantically searching for any way to get across without being seen.

A bridge was available closeby, but the boy would not use it. Nimble as the children were, too many cars were piled up, with several of them being on fire. They would not be able to climb over them. Then there was the problem of the bodies. Even at this distance the boy could see them. It was hard enough trying to get his sister to calm down after seeing their local butcher shop store owner lying on the street, lifeless. He remembered the man, had visited the shop many times with his mother. He always had a piece of candy for each child who came in to his shop.

The little girl clung tight to her brother's leg as if it were a lifeline as he weighed their options.

If they followed the spillway to the right, they would loop around the residential area, leaving them more or less right back where they started. No clear path out of town would be available to them for a good while if they went that direction.

"We go left," he said, looking to the smoldering bridge leading towards what was once the busy commercial downtown district.

The fastest and safest way out of town, it would be their ticket to safety. The intense fighting had since moved on from that area, leaving heaping piles of building debris and infernos in its wake. Past the bulk of these sat a highway and a few offshoot roads leading to the nearby woods. If they could make it to those woods, they would be safe; no one would be able to find them, and the boy knew those trees like the back of his hand.

Even with this knowledge in mind, the sight of the burning town was enough to shake what little remained of his courage. The frantic fanfare of instinct screamed at him from the back of his mind, but he remained still, his heart pounding fearfully in his chest. Terror had frozen him in place.

"Brother," the girl cried, pulling at his shirt.

"_Under the bridge. Go under the bridge, Inuyasha." _

The name wasn't his, but he only knew of one person with such a ghostly voice who called him as such. A person whom he trusted greatly. Even still, it was strange to hear her voice, since he'd only ever seen the girl, Kagome, in his dreams. He searched every which way, hoping she would be standing there. Maybe, just maybe, she would know how get them out of this mess.

"_Go now!"_ the voice shrieked before it faded like the ash in the wind.

Spurred on by the advice of his friend, the boy made for the bridge. Scaling down was a bit much for his younger sister, so he carried her down. It wasn't an easy task, and, in the end, the extra weight made the boy lose his footing. He landed on his back, absorbing the brunt of the impact, which allowed the girl wrapped in his arms to remain unharmed.

"Brother?"

"Ugh…" he groaned, body stinging with pain from scrapes and cuts, along with something done awful to his ankle.

Gunfire echoed above, followed shortly with the cry of death from someone attempting to cross the bridge. When the body fell down to the spillway, the little girl tried to scream but her brother covered her mouth. They had to get going or they'd be next.

Biting back the need to groan from the pain of his bruised-up body, the boy stood and they scurried through the spillway as fast as they could manage with his injuries.

With the state he was in, he couldn't carry his sister anymore, so they held each other's hands tightly. Dodging between the husks of vehicles left on the road, he dashed for the cover of the nearest building. The alleyways were a mess, but that gave plenty of hiding places to cling to, places to rest for a moment before stumbling to the next. The first real cover that allowed them to catch their breaths.

In the darkness of one of these small nests of safety, the younger sibling clung to her brother. Her small body was hot and sticky with sweat, and the boy thought himself no doubt the same, which made it physically uncomfortable for them to be clinging to each other. But the need to know the other was still there triumphed over the need for comfort in that moment, so the boy said nothing and simply clung to her as well. He waited patiently as she struggled to regain her breath, burying the noisy sin in her brother's chest.

The noises from the two children could be heard over the blazing noise of a foreign voice over a loudspeaker.

Soon, however, neither of the children could be heard over the grating sound of a foreign voice blaring through a loudspeaker. "Baze ba un to va say!"

While the boy recognized the language as hailing from one of those far-off lands where sand is more copious than dirt, he could not understand why it was here in his home.

"Glory to Naraku!" a phrase repeated over and over again in that same grating voice which had begun to hurt the boy's ears, rattling in his brain.

_Naraku?_ he questioned, running his fingers through his sister hair to calm her as she started silently sobbing. To say he disliked the name would be an understatement; he loathed it, detested it, abhorred it. He had enough wits about him to understand that this "Naraku" or whatever it was, was the one responsible for the destruction and the death brought upon his town.

"Naraku…you…you…!" His mother had taught him never to curse anyone, but the boy's rage grew so strong he could do nothing but throw every curse a young child's mind could come up with towards that name.

His hateful tirade came to a sudden halt as artillery fire came crashing down near their hiding place. He flung himself in front of his sister, making sure she was shielded from the blast. She screamed in desperate fear as the earth shook and the jarring sound of a building splitting in half reached their ears. The boy looked up, and, to his horror, found they were only across the street from the collapsing building.

"Run, Rin!"

Before she could obey, the boy hauled her up and along in a mad dash out of the range of the collapsing structure. Their small bodies should not have been fast enough to make it clear of the falling debris. They should have been crushed beneath the wreckage of the toppling storefront. Yet they did. As if propelled forward by some unseen force, the children's feet moved faster than they ever had before and escaped death yet again that day.

The force of something so monumentally heavy caused the ground to quake and a wave of dust to fly out, blanketing the children as they escaped from the impact zone. Out of breath, the boy had no choice but to stop. His lungs burned as he sucked in the dust-filled air, coughing and choking as he bore down on his knees, red-faced. His sister fared no better than he, her smaller body having a tougher time of dealing with the lack of proper respiration.

Their eyes stung, and their lungs found only more pain in each breath they inhaled, desperate for some form of breathable air. The air was so thick with the dust and ash from the crumbling of stone and the burning of wood that their shirts did little to help when they tried to use them as filters. A wild desperation took over the boy and he tugged his sister along, trying to find an escape from the heinous environment which cloaked them.

"_No! Not yet. Don't leave the dust!" _The voice of Kagome was back, pleading hopelessly with him.

_Why? _The boy asked his friend. The cloud of floating debris hurt their eyes and made it difficult to breathe. Why should she want them to stay?

Try as she might to remain calm, Rin was beginning to panic, urging her brother to flee. Her frantic tone and the fearful look in her eyes only reinforced her brother's decision. They were leaving the dust cloud, whether Kagome liked it or not.

"_Inuyasha, please, don't go!"_

Their feet were already in motion. His friend just didn't understand they couldn't stay there any longer. She wasn't the one enduring that torture, she didn't understand how much it hurt to hesitate even half a second longer.

They cleared the dust cloud and made it onto a central business street in only a few seconds, the clean air tasting as sweet as water on their tongues as they coughed and drank it in greedily.

Night had begun to fall as they made their escape from the hate-filled air, making the sharpness of the bright light which fell on a few buildings nearby stand out that much more. The boy spared a few moments to peer at it, to figure out what it was, but it only took a few words from the crew for him to know that the tank was not on their side, and that they had been spotted.

"Bu hiya ta!"

The tank roared to life and began moving forward, crushing everything in its path. A metal beast intent on flattening their small bodies beneath its treads.

Rin could only let out a single cry of fear before her brother urged her forward as quickly as he could. He didn't care how slow she was in comparison to him, he would not let go. He had to protect her. They had to escape. His resolve to keep them both safe kept his sister's legs in motion, despite how her muscles screamed at her to stop.

The tank was an Abrams, left behind by the Americans when they withdrew from their long war in the middle east. It lurched this way and that under the command of its new occupants, a behemoth whose treads struggled to maintain a straight line through the piles of debris. It collided with a building, the clanking of its metal exoskeleton colliding with the sound of cracking stone, and it dragged the destroyed storefront along as its course was corrected.

Not only did these scavengers struggle to pilot the war machine correctly, they had yet to learn how to operate its massive turret which had the ability to flatten any number of opponents. As their targets were just children and their main weapon was still being prepped, one of the crew popped out of the turret hatch and begun to spray rounds in their direction with an AK.

The snapping bullets broke the boy's last bit of courage, and he let out a wailing scream. His sister's hand tightening around his reminded him of his duty, and he swallowed the sound as the bullets came closer. In a desperate attempt to free them from the bullets, he went left, forcing the shooter to zero in on his targets all over again. He was a poor shot, barely nipping at the children's heels as they ran, an advantage they would soon lose as the tank closed in on them.

"Cannon pur don!" came a voice from the belly of the metal beast, followed by a brief, victorious shout.

What the children couldn't understand was that the tank crew had finally got the turret working and were ready to shoot.

"Glory to Naraku!"

The explosion rattled the earth around the children. The boy instinctively shielded his sister as they fell to the ground, neither of them able to maintain an even footing to keep them going. The attack had landed far from its intended target, impacting a distant building instead of the small bodies it was meant to hit.

His ears ringing, the boy wanted nothing more than to lay there in defeat, letting his muscles finally relax in a much needed rest as his end approached, but he couldn't do that. Steeling himself, he patted Rin down for injuries, and upon finding none, pulled her up into a full sprint away from the approaching death machine. His head hurt and his sense of direction was muddled, but his mind repeated one thing, and one thing only; run. Just run. Run until they were both safe. Survive.

Another explosion came much closer, making the boy cringe. He felt compelled to shield Rin's ears, but he fought the urge, knowing he couldn't spare a single second from the task at hand. Debris flew at them from every direction, striking their bodies hard enough to draw blood, but they kept moving until the boy suddenly found himself weightless, his ears ringing with a muted silence. The cannon had found its target, its impact earth shattering, cratering the street behind the children and sending them flying.

The boy's landing was painful, tearing a gutteral screech from his lips upon impact. His vision swam as he laid there for a few seconds, trying to reel his mind back in, his focus obliterated. The first thing he could comprehend was pain, unbearable pain in all of his extremities, radiating out from his spine. His head throbbed as he struggled to regain control of his thoughts, rolling onto his side as he moved to pick himself up. Agony surged through his veins and he cried out, the sound garbled in his own ears, as if he were underwater. Blood dripped from the side of his head as he collapsed, ready to give up, until one thought crossed his mind; _Rin_.

Filled with a surge of energy, he pushed himself up, ignoring the pain that flooded his system, and stumbled, once, twice, three times before he was able to grab his sister's arm and claw a few inches away from where they had fallen. His chest heaved as he fought to escape, his mind whirling, making him nauseous. The world around him wobbled and spun as if viewed through a funhouse mirror. Why did he feel so light? Where was Rin's voice? She had always been a crybaby, and if he was in this much pain, surely she'd be sobbing inconsolably by now.

Without warning, the snapping of bullets around them stopped and the world seemed deathly silent.

Gaining enough sense to realize something was wrong, the boy turned to see Rin was nowhere to be found.

_Rin…?_ he wondered, his lethargic mind struggling to keep up. It didn't make any sense. He'd grabbed her arm, right? His eyes slowly fell down to where his hand held his sister's arm in a death grip, and he let out a pained, grief-filled wail that pierced the heavens. In his hand was his sister's arm, and only her arm. His breathing grew rapid as he stared at the remains of his sister.

His mother had told him to run. To take his sister and run. How was he supposed to do that now? How was he supposed to keep her safe if… He shook uncontrollably, realizing his failure to keep his sister safe. Where was she?

"R-Rin…?" he whispered, his throat sore from all the screaming and the dust. Forcing himself to stand, he limped forward, desperately trying to find the rest of his sister. She could still be alive, he could still keep her safe. All he had to do was find her.

He blinked, and he was engulfed by smoke, thick, clinging smoke that caused him to struggle for breath. He'd fallen into the hole made by the blast that had sent them flying. Weakly flinging his arm around, he tried to clear the smoke, looking for his sister. She wasn't anywhere his eyes searched. Mind whirling with confusion, he began brushing aside debris, desperately searching for Rin, trying to fulfill his mother's last wish. They were going to make it out together, he and his sister, he would make sure of that. But he didn't have much time to ensure that reality. Bad men were after them. Bad men who wanted them dead.

The boy let out a cry of frustration and fear; the more he dug, the more the panic took hold. He had to find his sister. He had to! She had to be around here somewhere!

_Rin…Rin…Rin…!_ "Its okay! Your big brother is here! You can come out of hiding. Everything is going to be okay. Just come on out!" _Please!_

The boy's fingers bled as he searched, and the ground began to shake, but his mind was too far gone to understand what his body was telling him. The metal behemoth rumbled ever closer, turret zeroing in. The cacophony of the explosion barrelled through the decimated town, bouncing off destroyed walls and empty, burned out husks of buildings.

He should be dead. The boy should be dead, at least, he thought he should. But, he felt relatively fine. He was still breathing, still feeling the pain of his landing from earlier, still searching for his sister.

From behind the flaming metal inferno that had been the tank, a giant of broad muscle and a stature which screamed soldier made himself known. Minus the indiscriminate ponytail, everything from the man's equipment to his demeanor was tailored to war. An American-styled M4 rifle was nestled in his hands, and from between his lips poked out a cheap, wrinkled cigarette. A mercenary, not that the boy cared to know that. His sole purpose right now was to find his sister, the owner of the arm he clung so tightly to.

Dark eyes focused on the little survivor, scanning his battered body covered in cuts and scrapes and a few broken bones. He was bleeding from the side of his head and body, somewhere, but he didn't seem to noticed, too entranced by his current task. The mercenary was no medic, but even he could tell the boy would be in danger of bleeding out if something wasn't done, and soon. He was a mess, a goner if someone didn't help.

But the mercenary had helped already, had blown up the tank about to blow the kid up. He had given the kid a chance, even if the kid was too stupid to take advantage of that fact. "Well," he said, swishing his cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. "I've done my good deed in all this mess." With one last look at the boy, he turned to step away.

"Please!" the voice sprang up around him, turning his surprised attention to another child whose desperate eyes were staring right back at him, praying hands folded together under her chin. She was wearing a pure white dress that was an impossibility in the destruction that had ravaged the city. Had she been standing there before?

_This can't be whoever the kid is looking for, she still has both of her arms. Wait a second… is she glowing?_ The mercenary's eyes narrowed as he assessed the child standing before him, noting the heavenly aura she seemed to be shining with. _'What the hell?'_

"Please. Don't leave him."

He opened his left eye, closed for a well-aimed shot before he deduced she wasn't a threat, and eyed the girl still standing there, a beautifully shining pearl amidst the grimy battlefield. Curiosity getting the better of him, he stretched a cautious hand out, jumping back when it went straight through her shoulder. "Gah!" His hand tightened around the handle of his gun, ready now more than ever to squeeze the trigger.

"Protect Inuyasha. He needs you now."

The distant sound of combat tore his gaze away from the strangely glowing girl for a brief moment before it returned, eyeing her with uncertainty. "I don't think you grasp who I am, sweetie. I'm a hired gun. The best even. I don't deal with…children." He spared a glance at the boy still listlessly searching under the rocks.

"Please," she moved closer, tripping the mercenary as he fell back over the uneven ground. "Save this one. Just this one. He's my friend."

In an instant, she was gone, leaving nothing to even remotely suggest she had once stood before him. The mercenary looked frantically around, trying to find where she went, but found nothing. Lowering the rifle at-the-ready, the dangerous mercenary looked down at the broken child, sighing. "This is going to be a handful."

Holstering the rifle to his backside he approached the young boy and tried to remove the severed arm from the boy's grasp. The boy growled and fought back with every last bit of strength to resist the attempt to rob him of the last piece of his family.

"Enough boy."

With a single punch to the face, the boy was knocked out cold. Tossing the useless keepsake aside, the mercenary went to work dressing the near fatal wounds the boy sustained. Once finished, he hoisted the small child onto his shoulder, needing to move. The battle was getting closer. "They're going to dock my pay for this."

The mercenary retreated just as the skies became full of American jets and support helicopters, drowning out the sounds of battle with their engines.

"Looks like the Allied forces finally are taking action," he mumbled casually, scratching his chin. A flight of fancy turned his gaze to the small child hanging limp on his shoulder. "Hm... Inuyasha, was it? Nice ring to it."

Naraku's invasion of a peaceful, loving country was halted on that day. The backbone of the radical army was broken with its leader disappearing from the world. Not only did the monster disappear, but so too did a small, broken boy, carried away into another country in the arms of the world's most dangerous hired gun.


End file.
